The bestselling major biography of Rudi Dutschke
Gretchen Dutschke surprises us as her murdered husband’s biographer. Her book is anti-authoritarian and loving, funny and tragic, analytic and gripping. It is the ultimate text about the 1968 uprising. In the end, the assassin’s bullets really did claim their victim. Namely, Rudi Dutschke, who epitomized the 1960s “außerparlamentarische Opposition” (“extra-parliamentary opposition” or APO) and became a leading figure of the environmental movement. In 1979, Rudi Dutschke died of wounds inflicted in 1968 by Josef Bachmann, an inflamed right-wing extremist. Dutschke was an original thinker. He created a theory based on revolutionary practice and tried to live by it. He demanded that Germany reunite under liberal auspices. And he grasped that the new environmental threats were a reason to keep developing his theory. No one knew Rudi Dutschke better than his wife, who surprises us as a biographer with this book. Presenting countless previously unknown sources, she draws a picture of a great political adventure and tells the story of a love that passed every crucial test. Gretchen Dutschke has written the ultimate text about the uprising of 1968.
